Most of this is a Led Zeppelin gig dominated by longwinded soloing from Jimmy Page. If that's your bag, dive in, you'll love it for the music at least. For me, it was a reminder of how I felt about this kind of thing as a kid in the '70s: I hated it, and my feelings, it turns out, well, remain the same: this much electric guitar Sturm und Drang feels as tedious and dreary to me as being caught in an actual storm. Another reminder of why punk felt so necessary to so many of us. Yet still, call me naive, I came to this with certain hopes, I suppose of some kind of transcendent experience. I mean, these guys were masters of their craft, no?
This morning I read the following in a book of Joan Didion essays: 'Make a place available to your eyes and in many ways it is no longer available to your imagination.' This is like that, except here the greater immediacy of the moving image undermines the aura of photos already 'available to our eyes.' Taken in full, Zeppelin's legendary majesty turns into an actual if not literal lead balloon: four regular-sized mortal guys, not gods, playing music full of pomposity, inflected with sword and sorcery as silly as it's ever been. No surprise that when it comes to turning this into onscreen images, you end up with the banality of the fantasy sequences here: Plant slaying castle guards to rescue a maiden, Page seeking wisdom from an elder who turns out to be himself. More and more as I watched, I had the feeling that Zep ended up a 180 degree betrayal of where rock 'n' roll began: relatable humans carving out the space to get down and dirty, not high and mighty, with their joys, griefs and rages. That's what punk tried to snatch back from '70s high mannerism, whether heavy rock or prog. As the New York Dolls' David Johansson put it: 'Getting back to that Little Richard flash.' Even Zeppelin knew how to do this at the start with 'Communication Breakdown.' To flesh out my argument, see Dave Hickey's essay, 'The Delicacy of Rock 'n' Roll.'
So much for about two thirds of the Zeppelin mystique: the post-hippy sense that all the knights, elves, sexy wenches and Valhalla stuff might mean anything and thereby turn the self-indulgent noodling into credible art. Most of the rest is sex alone and it fares no better, despite seeming truer to rock 'n' roll's roots. I think the reason is, here too we get a superego myth of superhuman virility, not the vulnerable frustration of 'Satisfaction,' 'What do I get?' or 'Summertime Blues.' The artful fraying on the bulging crotch of Plant's too tight jeans looks like the tawdry, obvious, Freudian manipulation it is.
The whole experience is like being able to go back in time and find out just how much we scam ourselves when we give in to nostalgia.
This morning I read the following in a book of Joan Didion essays: 'Make a place available to your eyes and in many ways it is no longer available to your imagination.' This is like that, except here the greater immediacy of the moving image undermines the aura of photos already 'available to our eyes.' Taken in full, Zeppelin's legendary majesty turns into an actual if not literal lead balloon: four regular-sized mortal guys, not gods, playing music full of pomposity, inflected with sword and sorcery as silly as it's ever been. No surprise that when it comes to turning this into onscreen images, you end up with the banality of the fantasy sequences here: Plant slaying castle guards to rescue a maiden, Page seeking wisdom from an elder who turns out to be himself. More and more as I watched, I had the feeling that Zep ended up a 180 degree betrayal of where rock 'n' roll began: relatable humans carving out the space to get down and dirty, not high and mighty, with their joys, griefs and rages. That's what punk tried to snatch back from '70s high mannerism, whether heavy rock or prog. As the New York Dolls' David Johansson put it: 'Getting back to that Little Richard flash.' Even Zeppelin knew how to do this at the start with 'Communication Breakdown.' To flesh out my argument, see Dave Hickey's essay, 'The Delicacy of Rock 'n' Roll.'
So much for about two thirds of the Zeppelin mystique: the post-hippy sense that all the knights, elves, sexy wenches and Valhalla stuff might mean anything and thereby turn the self-indulgent noodling into credible art. Most of the rest is sex alone and it fares no better, despite seeming truer to rock 'n' roll's roots. I think the reason is, here too we get a superego myth of superhuman virility, not the vulnerable frustration of 'Satisfaction,' 'What do I get?' or 'Summertime Blues.' The artful fraying on the bulging crotch of Plant's too tight jeans looks like the tawdry, obvious, Freudian manipulation it is.
The whole experience is like being able to go back in time and find out just how much we scam ourselves when we give in to nostalgia.
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